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For Patients, Does The FDA Play Fair?

They have a tough job, those government doctors, scientists, and bureaucrats who are charged with assessing the safety and effectiveness of proposed new medical products. As you know, they rely largely on studies presented by the applicants.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the power to not approve a new drug or product or even pull it off the market. Right now it is considering limiting or pulling GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) diabetes drug, Avandia, because of newly discovered data that it may have caused heart attack in some patients –- data mysteriously not shown in GSK’s own studies. If the drug is pulled it will cost GSK billions of dollars in lost revenue but, from the FDA’s point-of-view, it will be protecting the public. And, after all, there are safer diabetes drugs on the market as alternatives. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*

Drug Ads: Consumers And Doctors Are Tuning Them Out

How effective is direct-to-consumer drug advertising? Some think that drug ads should be banned altogether, saying that it encourages patients to ask their doctors for expensive, brand name prescription drugs. It turns out their fears may be overblown.

NPR’s Shots blogs about a recent study looking at the effectiveness of these ads. The numbers, for the pharmaceutical companies anyways, are not encouraging. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

No Forgetting To Take Your Meds

Normally, the patient calls the pharmacy for a prescription. Now, the prescription is doing that by itself. GlowCaps, a prescription bottle cap made by Vitality, has assumed control for medication compliance.

The bottle cap fits prescription bottles, but has uses cellphone technology to tap into wireless networks. Once connected, the pill bottle does everything imaginable to remind patients to take their pills.

There’s lights — plenty of them. The bottle cap really does glow and make noise to remind patients. Plug-in units wirelessly connected to the bottle cap can be placed anywhere there’s a wall socket. Oh, and it will call you, too, if you forget. The company calls this “Reminders Ramp from Subtle to Insistent.” (Add “relentless” to that.)

Ultimately, GlowCaps tallies compliance and sends reports to caregivers and physicians. Not surprisingly, studies show that constant nagging to take one’s medications works.

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Personalized Medicine: A Bait And Switch

Mark Hyman, a proponent of so-called “functional medicine” promoting himself over at the Huffington Post (an online news source that essentially allows dubious medical infomercials to pass as news) has posted a particularly egregious article on personalized medicine for dementia.

In the article Hyman distorts the modern practice of medicine, the current state of genetic science, and the very notion of “disease.” It is, as usual, a fine piece of medical propaganda sure to confuse many a reader. Hyman starts with some standard epidemiology of dementia –- it’s a common and growing disorder –- but then descends quickly into distortion and pseudoscience. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

Industry-Sponsored Medical Education: Should Big Pharma Buy Doctors Lunch?

Big Pharma Free Lunch WagonAppetite for Instruction: Why Big Pharma should buy your doctor lunch sometimes” is the headline of an article on Slate.com that has upset many readers. I’m not terribly upset about it because it just seems too naive and misinformed to get upset about. The final line of the piece tells you all you need to know about the tone of the column:

“Ousting commercial support is creating a huge chasm in medical education, leaving doctors not only hungry but also starved for knowledge.”

A number of online comments were posted in reaction to the piece. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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